


Pictures

by inkchantress



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Character Death, Character Death In Dream, Chat Noir Being Chat Noir, Gen, I guess it could be Angst with a happy ending but it's not that happy, Just not real, Major Character Injury, Major character death - Freeform, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Needs Therapy, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Needs a Hug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Has Anxiety, Nightmares, but it's not actually real, so i didn't know whether to tag it as such or not, so i'm putting it here in case anyone reads my tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:47:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22781242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkchantress/pseuds/inkchantress
Summary: Outside of the suit, behind the mask, she’s about as unlucky as anyone can get.And she has bad days.God, does Marinette Dupain-Cheng have bad days.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 140





	Pictures

Ladybug has nightmares.

Of course, nobody knows this. Not even Tikki, although sometimes she suspects. Sometimes, when it’s late at night and the world is still, she’ll hear Marinette mumbling in her sleep, tossing and turning, kicking the sheets off of her. Occasionally, she’ll cry in her sleep, and Tikki, for lack of a better solution, will take up residence in one of her pigtails as a kind of helpless pat on the back.

But no. Not even Tikki knows the true horrors that fill Marinette’s nights.

Nobody knows.

Sometimes, if she didn’t get quite enough sleep the night before, the nightmares will begin to spill into waking hours, and Chat will notice something’s up. She’ll slip on a rooftop or mumble something under her breath that will prick up his ears. She once fell asleep on his shoulder, and he heard snippets of what sounded like a horrifying dream through her mouth, something about blood and fire and monsters she couldn’t see. 

He, too, suspects her nights are filled with something he cannot protect her from, thinks there may be more to her worst nightmare than just ‘losing her powers’. But he doesn’t pry, because he knows she’ll deny it.

She always denies it.

Sometimes, on the good days, she can even get it together enough to lie to herself. She’s  _ Marinette.  _ She’s  _ perfectly fine. _

But on the bad days that couldn’t be further from the truth.

A picture: a girl, jolted awake, staring at the ceiling with her chest heaving, clothes and sheets stuck to her body with sweat, tears obscuring her vision and running a steady path down her cheeks, frozen.

If she’s lucky, she won’t remember them. She wakes up from many of them in a heightened state of panic, and most of the time she completely forgets why once her heart rate returns to normal. On the good days, if she’s lucky, she gets up and pretends it never happened. She makes her bed and goes to school and tries to wipe all evidence of tears from her face. Because, of course, she’s  _ Marinette.  _ She doesn’t have  _ nightmares. _ She’s  _ just a normal girl, with a normal life. _

But outside of the suit, behind the mask, she’s about as unlucky as anyone can get.

And she has bad days.

_ God,  _ does Marinette Dupain-Cheng have bad days.

When her luck runs out, she’ll remember. She’ll remember everything. When the inevitable bad day comes, she’ll lay there, staring at her ceiling. Maybe it’ll be dark, but most likely the sun will be just beginning to rise, and her father will knock on the attic door any minute to tell her to head to school. The tears will have already fallen in her sleep, and the pillow will be wet with salt, stuck to her hair, leaving her eyes a puffy red. Every one of her limbs will be frozen in place, stuck in a horrible unmoving position. She’ll be breathing so fast she can’t see, and yet there will never be enough air in the world for her lungs.

A picture: Tom Dupain, looking into Marinette’s room once she’s left for school, seeing a dark spot on her bed and thinking she must have wet the bed  _ for the first time since she was five,  _ not knowing that it was lingering sweat left over from the night before, when her sheets attacked her, bound her limbs, shoved themselves down her throat.

When her luck runs out, she can’t even try to pretend like nothing’s wrong. On the bad days, on the  _ awful  _ days, she’s cursed. Chat dies over and over again when she closes her eyes, a hundred different ways, and every single time she screams so loudly her heart flies from her chest and every single time no one can hear the faintest sound. She blinks and Paris is in ruins, burned to the ground, and she’s in the middle of the road,  _ just a normal girl with a normal life,  _ clutching the last bit of hope she has left and waiting for the flame to descend upon her.

A picture: a girl, surrounded by fire, covered in blood, clothes ripped, muscles weak and shaky, Tikki gone, the world in ruins, everyone she’s ever loved broken and dead, her heart crying out  _ if only she could join them  _ because anything would be better than knowing she let the entire world down.

She will get to school and Nino will ask her if she’s okay, and she will look back and see only Carapace, speared through the heart, his wrist bloody and empty, his bracelet gone. Another person she couldn’t save.

Alya will lean over and ask her why she’s late, ask her why on earth she looks so pale, ask her if something happened at home, and she will look back and see only Rena Rouge, dead on the ground, a red line encircling her neck where her necklace used to sit. Another person she failed.

And,  _ God,  _ she will see Chat Noir everywhere. On the roofs. Whistling on the sidewalk. Grinning at her on patrol. Swinging his tail and making a cat pun. Throat slit open in a bright red slash, stabbed through the torso and coughing up blood, burned alive, exploded. Sacrificed again.

A picture: a boy, dressed head to toe in leather, bright green eyes beaming at her from behind a mask of black, giving her a final, tired smile, fading away.

He’ll tell her she didn’t let him down. He’ll tell her she could never let him down. He’ll stroke her shoulder and kiss her hand and tell her she did the best she could. He’ll say he loves her  _ no matter what, Bugaboo _ . And she will burst into tears, right there in the middle of Ms. Bustier’s lesson about Shakespeare’s most famous works. She will begin to fully sob, head on the table, screaming into the wood  _ get out get out leave me alone _ , seeing things nobody else sees, hearing voices that don’t exist.

But, and thank God for this, most days are not bad days.

Most days she is Marinette, baker’s daughter, designer extraordinaire, ray of sunshine to rival all rays of sunshine,  _ just a normal girl with a normal life. _

Most days she is shaken but intact, still strong, still perfect.

And most days, when Chat Noir asks her what’s wrong, she turns away and says it’s nothing and tries and mostly succeeds to banish the pictures of him burned into her retinas.

A picture: two teenagers, sitting on a rooftop, watching the sun set between the buildings, carrying their own weights and each other’s, fighting the monsters, fighting the nightmares, fighting time.

**Author's Note:**

> found this in my fanfic folder just collecting dust and thought i wanted to post it. (if you can't tell all i post is angst and i'm sorry)  
> comments and kudos are always appreciated!!  
> find me on tumblr at inkchantress.tumblr.com


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